When An Individual Is Wrongfully

When an individual is wrongfully convicted for a crime they did not commit the actual offender remains free and able to commit more crimes. Significant aspects linked with the potential for failure in the criminal justice system are classified, the value of focusing on preventable wrongdoings to reduce the number of conviction injustices is emphasized, and problems in eyewitness testimony and false statements are stated. Administration issues associated with wrongful convictions are examined that concern crime control versus due process, compensating and reintegrating convicted innocents, and the unchangeable nature of capital punishment. Reasons for unlawful sentences include eyewitness error; errors and unprofessional conduct by police and prosecutors; and plea bargaining. This research paper explains why wrongful conviction has become a prominent issue, the scope of the problem, its causes, and reform proposals.

Wrongful Convictions

A conviction of a person prosecuted for a crime which, in the result of the following investigation, proves false. Individuals who are in fact innocent but who have been wrongly convicted by a jury or other court of law. The growing number of exonerations, however, and the developing awareness that such inequalities occur every day in American courts, raises serious doubts about the accuracy and fairness of the criminal justice system. This wave of awareness and promising research has motivated a growing number of innocence projects, which work to exonerate wrongly convicted prisoners, also to offer justice policy reforms devised to decrease the number of wrongful punishments or to alleviate their effects.

Problem

Forensic Science Error or Misconduct

Difficulties with the expert evidence presented by forensic scientists or forensic examiners are the second leading cause of wrongful convictions; false forensic evidence supported the convictions of 57% of the first 200 DNA exonerations.

For example, confirmation prejudice is when people observe more, give extra emphasis to, or deliberately look for evidence that would prove their existing beliefs and expectations and are likely to excuse or completely ignore evidence which could reject their opinions. As such, identification of a type of bias in collecting and interpreting evidence. Forensic error and misconduct come in a variety of forms, including problems integrated with the method, inexperienced or untruthful experts, and cheap forensic laboratories.

Examiners have been known to misjudge where evidence is based on forensic science, which includes blood analysis, drug analysis, forensic toxicology, and organic and inorganic analysis of crime scene trace evidence. In a few infamous cases, forensic investigators have been exposed as pathological liars who always testified to benefit the prosecution, even when no tests have been conducted. In addition to outright falsification, forensic specialists can deceive courts and juries by emphasizing the strength of their findings, reporting unresolved reports as conclusive, and failing to report conflicting results.

The most reliable methods can produce incorrect results if the forensic laboratories are substandard. As DNA testing becomes more unreliable, the risks of contamination rise, unless the laboratories are in natural form. Testing in some second-rate laboratories has even led to several people being wrongly convicted by false DNA analysis.

On March 23rd, 1944, in Alcala South Carolina these two white girls were riding their bikes on the track that separate the whites and blacks. They were looking for may pop flower, but within an hour they came up missing their body turned up in a ditch. George was blamed for the murder of Betty June Binnicker and Mary Emma Thames ages 11 and 8. White folks accused him of this homicide since he was the last one who saw the two white girls alive. He wasn’t guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they failed to realized George is 14 years old he is 5ft tall and weigh 95 pounds there no way he could wrestle two girls in the ground. The resolve sheriff could not understand he decided he was leaving up the room with a confession even if he has to fabricate it. He offered George ice cream and told him he could go home and just forget it if he just admits that he did it. The interrogation of he being questioned with the fear the sheriff left the room and lied saying George confessed that he was after sex. He was charged with the killing of Betty June Binnicker and Emma Mary Thames. Within an hour he had a speedy trial with all white jury that deliberated his innocence, knowing blacks weren’t allowed to be on the jury and with no witnesses. His name is George Junis Stinny Jr. who was convicted of the double homicide of Betty June Binnicker and Emma Mary Thames; he was electrocuted under pretense.

False Confessions

Most people cannot understand why innocent persons confess, particularly since the “third degree” (beating and torture to get confessions) has mostly disappeared from American law enforcement. Interrogations techniques have still been proven to be very tough, leading individuals to commit to any allegations. In recent studies it has noted that in about 20% of exonerations, false confessions were obtained, and at the least 125 false confessions have been documented. What people do not know is that police investigation is a “guilt presumptive” process, basically designed to force individuals into admitting to crimes they did not commit. Hundreds of convicted prisoners have been exonerated by DNA and non-DNA evidence, revealing that police-induced false confessions are a leading cause of wrongful conviction of the innocent.Nevertheless, the DNA exonerations provide a window into the causes of inaccurate prosecution and wrongful conviction. A disturbing number of these cases involved false confessions given by innocent defendants during a psychologically coercive police interrogation. False confessions raise important questions for social scientists, mental health professionals, policy-makers, and the public. They are consistently one of the leading, yet most misunderstood, causes of error in the American legal system and thus remain one of the most prejudicial sources of false evidence that lead to wrongful convictions.There are three sequential errors, which occur during a police-elicited false confession, that lead to a wrongful conviction. Investigators first misclassify an innocent person as guilty; they next subject him to a guilt-presumptive, accusatory interrogation that invariably involves lies about evidence and often the repeated use of implicit and explicit promises and threats as well.

Solution

The goal of the project is to understand how the criminal justice system avoids wrongful convictions by determining what factors or uniquely present in violent felony cases that ended in an official exoneration after conviction with those in which defendant had charges dismissed before trial.

Reducing the Number of Wrongful Convictions

Recommended lineup reforms are grounded in laboratory research findings that show they will reduce the number of false identifications without significantly reducing accurate identifications. Witnesses in all lineups should be informed that the suspect may not be present within the lineup. This reduces the chance of witnesses identifying someone who looks similar to the suspect. All lineup fillers should be selected by the victim’s verbal description, and not on similarity to the suspect. Lineups should contain only one suspect and should be fair in that there are similarities of race, height, general appearance, facial hair, photograph characteristics, and the like between the suspect and fillers. It is best that the lineup administrator not know who the suspect is to ensure that there is no unconscious influence on the witness. If lineup administration is blind, the lineup participants should be presented one at a time rather than as a group. This helps to prevent the exercise of relative judgment, by which a witness picks a person out of the lineup which looks most like the memory of the perpetrator rather than recognizing the perpetrator. A witness should be asked for a confidence statement immediately after making an identification, to prevent his or her inflation of confidence as the case proceeds.

All crime laboratories should be accredited and their examiners certified and required to undergo periodic proficiency testing. Defense attorneys, as well as prosecutors and judges, should be educated in forensic testing techniques, and funding should be sufficient to have challenged forensic evidence retested. Defense attorneys should become aware that comparison testing methods, like fingerprinting, are not infallible. Where standards for comparison testing are weak or even suspect, caution should be taken in allowing and weighing certain evidence. Forensic science research is needed to ensure that methods and findings are valid. Conclusion

The rising number of exonerations, however, and the growing awareness that such injustices occur every day in American courts, raise doubts about the accuracy and fairness of the criminal justice system. The injustice of being convicted and imprisoned for a crime one did not commit has not only become alarming but recurrent. In order for this problem to be reduced, evidence, eye witness descriptions and pickings, and interrogation processes should be reviewed thoroughly before trial and before sentencing. The individuals who have spent years in the justice system behind a crime they didn’t commit should be compensated for the years taken away from them.